Little Cat Feet

Yesterday, I made good on my promise to get a flu shot. No big deal, and it didn't even hurt, although it did give me a little bit of a sore arm. While I was out, I picked up a few more groceries, and then I came home and did a little more practicing on my kitty paws. Someone suggested outlining the paws to help them stand out a little more. I think she's right!

Here it is beside the one I did the day before.

So, I had a long narrow practice piece, and I continued up with the feet walking the length of the piece, 

Until I'd filled the whole thing. 

My goal is to make it look as if a cat has walked across the quilt blocks. What do you think?

Now, if I can just figure out what to do with the rest of the quilt, I'll be set. Here are my ideas:

The stippling and paws are just for the backgrounds. Then I'll outline the cats and quilt whiskers onto them. I'll use some sort of larger filler to fill in their bodies. Then I'll outline the cats in the cornerstones. For the sashings, I'm thinking of doing a row of this motif on each side of the sashing. It's something I found on Pinterest, I think:

And I think I'm set with that. What I'm still trying to decide is whether to use the same thread for the interior of the cats or a thread to match their color.

Now here's something. Have you ever had a problem with your thread breaking and nothing you did would solve the problem? The usual solutions are rethreading, changing your needle, adjusting your tension, oiling the machine, and still, your thread continues to break. Twice now I've discovered a burr on my spool. I was having trouble with this silk thread breaking. When I went to rethread the needle, I noticed the spool jumped off the spindle as I pulled on it. Checking the spool, I discovered this:

At first, I thought it was just the thread end coming out from beneath the thread. On closer inspection, I realized it was a seam line where the spool was put together. When I discovered this the last time, I used an emory board to smooth off the rough spot. In this case, the thread feeds from the top, and so I just flipped the spool over. Problem solved.

And I'll just say that it's a joy stitching this continuous motif. I'm not shy about quilting a motif that requires me to cut thread every little bit. Once I got this breakage problem under control, I stitched and stitched and stitched, which was liberating, to say the least.

The only other sewing related thing I did yesterday was to trace and cut the 35 pieces for the next section of And On that Farm. Geez. These took forever. I spent two hours just cutting them.

There was no time left at the end of the day for fusing this section, but having them cut and ready to go gives me a big head start on the day. I was hoping to have this finished today, but it looks like it will be Sunday at this point. 

The Amazon man delivered my Clear-Jel yesterday, and so first thing today is to can the apple pie filling I've been wanting to try.

Coring and peeling the apples will be the biggest part of this job because they don't have to cook for very long. Also, I have some red bell peppers from the CSA share piling up, and so I'm going to make some red pepper jelly. That should be fairly quick too (if anything about canning can be called "quick"). And that is absolutely the last bit of canning I'm going to do for the year. (Please forget I said that if I do any more.)

It's the last day to enter the giveaway for the Bag Ladies of the Fat Quarter Club. Thanks to all who have signed up for the stitch-along. It's going to be fun! I'll announce the winner of the giveaway tomorrow, so be sure to head on over there if you haven't entered.

ICYMI: There's a giveaway going on, along with the launch of a stitch-along. Don't miss out. Giveaway ends on Friday. Click right here to enter.